R.I.P.D., 2013.
Directed by Robert Schwentke.
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges, Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Bacon, Stephanie Szostak, James Hong, and Marisa Miller.
SYNOPSIS:
A recently slain cop joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest in Peace Department and tries to find the man who murdered him.
Will Smith plays a young, idealistic cop who gets hired by a top secret organisation that monitors aliens that take on human form and walk among the oblivious humans. He is team up with veteran Tommy Lee Jones and together work on their first case where they have to stop the world from being destroyed.
No, wait…
The above paragraph is incredibly facetious, but you could replace Will Smith with Ryan Reynolds, Tommy Lee Jones with Jeff Bridges and aliens with the dead and you’d have the plot of R.I.P.D., the new action-comedy from RED director Robert Schwentke.
Based off the Dark Horse comic of the same name, R.I.P.D. will always struggle with comparisons to Men in Black but when comparing the two however, there really is no competition. R.I.P.D. has neither the wit, charm, character or genius that Men in Black had. But even if you don’t compare it to the vastly superior Men in Black, R.I.P.D. still falls flat for being a plodding, lazy and very boring movie.
Ryan Reynolds gives his most bored performance to date as he blandly delivers each line of dialogue without any conviction, belief of effort to create one of the duller movie leads we’ve had all year. His partner while he was alive is played by Kevin Bacon who appears to be channeling the character he plays in those EE adverts. He’s probably the best thing in the movie outside of Mary-Louise Parker (who can still be charismatic even when she’s not trying) but he doesn’t really have a whole lot to work against.
Which brings us to Jeff Bridges. If you’ve seen the trailers for R.I.P.D. then you’ll know that Bridges adopts a very thick southern accent and speaks like he has mothballs in his cheeks. While at times it can be quite charming and, dare I say, funny, but when he’s giving important plot points and you find yourself begging for subtitles, you have to wonder what Schwentke was thinking when he signed this casting and character choice off.
Speaking of poor directorial choices. It seems as if Schwentke didn’t really care about this project at all when he a-ok’d the dreadful CGI of the bad guys. 2013 has given us some CGI stinkers, but R.I.P.D. is among the worst you’ll not only see this year, but in many years. Isn’t it amazing to think that Jurassic Park was 20 years ago? R.I.P.D. is another example of how the technique is regressing as more and more talentless hacks get paid minimal wage for their work.
But even with it’s boring/inaudible acting and horrendous dialogue, R.I.P.D. was always going to fail because the story is so uninteresting and the whole film is a bore. Its 2-hour running time drags like you wouldn’t believe as each dull scene follows into the next. It wouldn’t be so bad if the characters were at least interesting but they aren’t given any form of personality. We’re told that Roy is a ‘lawman’ from the 1500s but that’s about it and nothing ever really comes of that. There’s enough idea in the universe the film creates, but R.I.P.D. takes advantage of none of it.
Quite possibly among the worst movies of the year, R.I.P.D. is a slog to sit through and is an utter bore. Not one person appears to care about their performances and the CGI would have looked dated in 1998. It will get a lot of comparisons to Men in Black, but it doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.
Originally published August 25, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
